Last year (16/6/23) I blogged about the fact, and dwelt on the ramifications of, the intrusion of private providers into the NHS, not least via general practice. I focused on Operose, formed in 2020 when its American parent company Centene Corporation brought together its UK subsidiaries, The Practice Group and Simply Health. In a nutshell, Operose went on to acquire AT Medics, which had been founded in the New Labour years (2004) by six ‘doctorpreneurs’ who won several contracts under conditions allowing GPs and their companies to run publicly funded GP surgeries and to employ doctors; patients did not pay fees but ‘GP consortia’ companies could profit from public NHS funds to run GP surgeries. AT Medics had been operating 49 general practices across 19 London boroughs, providing services to around 370,000 patients. This, I argued, represented the thin end of the wedge. It was part of the deliberate, politically calculated, undermining of the NHS as a publicly funded institution offering universal treatment and care that was free at the point of need. It was an ‘Americanisation’ of what was once the best health care system in the Global North. My subtext was Chomsky formula: if you want to undermine a public sector institution, first underfund it to, second, create widespread public dissatisfaction, and then, third, insist on the need to reform an ailing service by calling in for-profit providers.
This short blog provides a predictable if depressing update. Operating behind the scenes, Operose in December 2023 sold off the GP surgeries it acquired to a private equity firm (HCRG Care Group, formerly known as Virgin Care and owned by British private equity company T20 Osprey Midco). This was done without any approval from any NHS body. ‘NHS’ is rapidly becoming a money-making brand name, under which rubric services are manifestly in decline.